BERLINGHIERI, Francesco de Nicola.
[The Caucasus from a landmark edition of Ptolemy]Tabula Tertia d Asia.Florence, 1482. Two sheets joined, as usual, paper size 430 x 560mm. Small worm hole in lower margin.The Caucasus, with Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and parts of Southern Russia, Turkey and Persia. from the third edition of Ptolemy's Geography to have printed maps, the first to be printed in the vernacular and the first with ‘modern' maps'. Francesco Berlinghieri (1440-1501), an Italian scholar and humanist, started work on a revision of Ptolemy in 1464, updating the Ptolemiac maps, supplementing them with modern maps (France, Italy, Spain and the Holy Land) and writing a commentary in Italian verse. The maps were engraved by Niccolò Tedesco, a German printer, unusually equidistant meridians and parallels, and rectangular borders rather than trapezoid. The completed work was published as "Septe Giornate della Geographia di Francesco Berlinghieri" ("The Seven Days of Geography").
[Ref: 11702]
£7,500.00
($9,623 • €8,423 rates)

WÄLDSEEMÜLLER, Martin.
[Ptolemaic Map of the Caucasus][Tabula III Asiae.]Lyons: M. & G. Treschel, 1535. Coloured woodcut, printed area 335 x 420mm. Some restoration at centrefold.The Fries reduction of Wäldseemüller's map of the Caucasus, with the title on verso. Originally intended not for a Ptolemy edition but for a new 'Chronica mundi' being written by Wäldseemüller, his death c.1520 caused the project to be shelved, so the reduced woodcuts were used to publish a smaller sized and so cheaper edition of the 'Geography'. On verso is a text surrounded by woodcut columnar decorations and another woodcut with numerous scenes including a woman sitting beside a tree with hanging body parts.
[Ref: 9883]
£700.00
($898 • €786 rates)

DE L'ISLE, Guillaume.
[Caspian Sea]Carte Marine de la Mer Caspiene levée Suivant les Ordres de S.M.Czariene...Paris, 1721, coloured, Two sheets conjoined, total 880 x 620mm.Verden, a Russian sailor, created the first accurate map of the Caspian, which Guillaume de L'Isle re-drew for publication., despite the sea having been visited by Alexander the Great two thousand years earlier.The two baroque cartouches and eight insets make this a very striking map.
[Ref: 10995]
£1,000.00
($1,283 • €1,123 rates)

SANTINI, Paolo.
[Georgia & Armenia]Carte de la Géorgie et des Pays Situés Entre la Mer Noire et la Mer Caspienne.Venice, 1775. Original colour. 485 x 665mm.An uncommon map of Georgia and parts of Armenia and Azerbaijan, unusually detailed for the period. It is based on the work of Joseph De L'Isle, who spent much of his career in Russia, producing the 'Atlas Russicus' (the first Russian atlas) with Ivan Kyrilov and founding the 'Academy of Sciences of St Petersburg'. He returned to Paris in 1747 with a large map collection, including this map of the Caucasus, which contains many Russian names written phonetically in Latin script.
[Ref: 13883]
£525.00
($674 • €590 rates)